Classified: The Sentinel Crisis is a budget video game for the Xbox. It was developed by Torus Games and published by Global Star Software. The PlayStation 2 version was cancelled due to negative reviews before release.
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Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/classified-the-sentinel-crisis-2005-xbox-review/
Never heard of Classified: The Sentinel Crisis? I don’t blame you. The only reason that I found this games was during one of my late night sessions of trying to find obscure games to play. And everywhere I looked for information on this game has shown me just how little of a footprint it has left on the history of video games.
You play as a Black Ops soldier recruited by the U.S. Military’s highly classified Sentinel Program. Your only tools are the Intelligent Sentinel Combat Suit (ISCS) and the multifunction OIWC assault rifle, a weapon of unparalleled versatility and power. The military scientist responsible for he sentinel technology was on a mission somewhere in the Blakans, but has now disappeared, and you’re sent in to find him. To find him, you must join forces with a rebel faction to expose the enemy and locate your quarry before the Sentinel technology falls into the wrong hands.
Got that? Because this game has the bare minimum of a story for it to qualify as a story, and is pretty much one step above just having text before every mission. This type of story has been done a thousand times better in a thousand other stories, and has been stretched as thinly as possible over the 6 hour single player campaign in this game. Meaning that nothing about the story stands out or is satisfying.
The level design for this game reminds me a lot of how levels for First Person Shooters for the Nintendo 64 were designed. Incredibly basic level design and structure. Get from point A to point B with little to no deviation. Even something like Goleneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 had more going on.
While everything looks passable, the whole thing kinda reminds me of the XBLA version of the original Perfect Dark, where everything about the game is the exact same except for the slightly higher quality models, textures, and higher screen resolution. Except that was done to make the game look like how you remember the game looking, and here, it just looks slightly outdated, even for the time.
You can’t even destroy computers, tables, and chairs like you could in the previously mentioned Goldeneye 007. At least let me destroy crates for ammo, health, or armor. But the game makes up for it with dropping plentiful amounts of ammo, and you have regenerating shields for most of the game.
There aren’t even any spots off the beaten path where you can collect extra ammo or health. The game is so linear that I’m surprised that it isn’t a light-gun game. This whole game is so generic that It could be a stand in for one of those generic games that you would see in the background of a movie that only exists because they couldn’t afford the rights to a real game.
The AI is so simple that I’ve seen multiple bad guys running into a wall trying to get where they are going. One time I saw two enemies doing this at once, while running in two completely different directions. Somehow, sometimes the enemies don’t hear your weapon fire. The either rely entirely on line of sight, or only notice you when you’re incredibly close to them, and when you’re that close, you’re already firing at them, killing them before they can even fire at you. There are some guys who are slightly harder to kill than the others, but they’re still such an insignificant amount of trouble.
Every now and again, the game likes to have a section that breaks up the shooting, but always ends up being slow, boring, and tedious. There’s one level that begins in a tram (train?), where you have to protect the tram from being damaged and exploding. It isn’t that long or difficult, it’s just incredibly tedious. It’s soon followed by an incredibly short section where you have to use your fists to attack enemies because they captured you and took all of your weapons that was so short that it feels like it could have been taken out of the game completely and replaced with a cutscene of your character attacking one of the guards and stealing his weapon.
There is even a pseudo stealth section, and I say pseudo, because it doesn’t even put in the bare minimum of just hiding in the shadows until someone turns around you can sneak past them. And it doesn’t even matter anyway, because you can just blast everyone away, and you don’t get punished for it. The only thing that matters is killing the guy that the objectives want you to kill.
The weapons are also pretty generic. I say weapons, plural, but really there is one weapon that slightly changes its look depending on it’s fire mode. Basically the gun is a stand in for the generic array of weapons that most First Person Shooters have. The assault rifle and sniper rifle modes are the most useful, followed by the grenade launcher and the RPG, which are good for taking out groups of enemies close together. But then we have the shotgun.
The shotgun is one of the most mediocre shotguns I’ve ever seen in a game. For it to even be effective, you have to run right up to an enemy and hope your aiming is good enough that you can take it out in one go. Any further and it’s useless. With the other modes in the gun, the shotgun pretty much never gets used outside of you using it once, finding out it’s terrible, and never using it again.
Actually, there is a second gun, a generic handgun. The only time I used it is when the game took away my omni-weapon. It works, but I’ve never felt the need to ever go back to it outside of that one time.
You can pick up upgrades for your gun throughout the game. Some of them you seem to get automatically, but I have no idea where your character got these from. Maybe it’s a Metroid: Other M situation where you’re playing a character who isn’t allowed to use them until a certain point in the game. Or maybe I’m trying to make up excuses for an already bad game by comparing it to an even worse one.
The game doesn’t even include multiplayer. Not even split-screen multiplayer or co-op. This game has such little replayability that you could watch someones let’s play on Youtube and pretend it’s a machinima movie put together by a couple of friends.
While the game doesn’t have ragdoll physics, since games were still in that transition period where not every game had realistic physic yet, but it’s still mildly amusing to see a character’s body zip past the camera like Wile E. Coyote when a grenade explodes next to them. How depressing is it that the most fun I had with this game was purely accidental.
This game was released in 2005. At this point, the original Xbox had Halo 1 and 2, Doom 3, Unreal Championship, and Half-Life 2. This game was even released the same year as Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, Serious Sam 2, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. It’s not like the Xbox was hurting for fantastic First Person Shooters. And that’s only the FPS games that only appeared exclusively on the original Xbox (sans PC version of course, we’re talking consoles only here), as there were tons of multi-platform First Person Shooters on the console too. So it’s incredibly easy to see why Classified: The Sentinel Crisis was so overlooked.
Why would you buy this over any other FPS the system had to offer? You could buy the disc version the Halo 2 Multiplayer maps and have a better time playing by yourself by just running around and looking at how good the level and art design is. At least then you could have some friends over and a good time.
This game might not even be close to the worst game I’ve played on a technical level, or even on a conceptual level, but there is one thing I can say about a lot of bad games. They either have ambition, personality, or, if nothing else, they’re easy to make fun of.
At some point there was going to be a PS2 version, but it ended up being cancelled for unknown reasons. I’m guessing it’s because this game barely sold any copies, and was promptly forgotten before it even hit store shelves.
Classified: The Sentinel Crisis has to be one of the most bland First Person Shooters that I’ve ever played. From it’s name and box art, to it’s characters, plot, and levels. Not great, not terrible, just incredibly bland and forgettable. Unless you are on the hunt to collect everything you can for your retro games collection, you should probably avoid this.
Never heard of Classified: The Sentinel Crisis? I don’t blame you. The only reason that I found this games was during one of my late night sessions of trying to find obscure games to play. And everywhere I looked for information on this game has shown me just how little of a footprint it has left on the history of video games.
You play as a Black Ops soldier recruited by the U.S. Military’s highly classified Sentinel Program. Your only tools are the Intelligent Sentinel Combat Suit (ISCS) and the multifunction OIWC assault rifle, a weapon of unparalleled versatility and power. The military scientist responsible for he sentinel technology was on a mission somewhere in the Blakans, but has now disappeared, and you’re sent in to find him. To find him, you must join forces with a rebel faction to expose the enemy and locate your quarry before the Sentinel technology falls into the wrong hands.
Got that? Because this game has the bare minimum of a story for it to qualify as a story, and is pretty much one step above just having text before every mission. This type of story has been done a thousand times better in a thousand other stories, and has been stretched as thinly as possible over the 6 hour single player campaign in this game. Meaning that nothing about the story stands out or is satisfying.
The level design for this game reminds me a lot of how levels for First Person Shooters for the Nintendo 64 were designed. Incredibly basic level design and structure. Get from point A to point B with little to no deviation. Even something like Goleneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 had more going on.
While everything looks passable, the whole thing kinda reminds me of the XBLA version of the original Perfect Dark, where everything about the game is the exact same except for the slightly higher quality models, textures, and higher screen resolution. Except that was done to make the game look like how you remember the game looking, and here, it just looks slightly outdated, even for the time.
You can’t even destroy computers, tables, and chairs like you could in the previously mentioned Goldeneye 007. At least let me destroy crates for ammo, health, or armor. But the game makes up for it with dropping plentiful amounts of ammo, and you have regenerating shields for most of the game.
There aren’t even any spots off the beaten path where you can collect extra ammo or health. The game is so linear that I’m surprised that it isn’t a light-gun game. This whole game is so generic that It could be a stand in for one of those generic games that you would see in the background of a movie that only exists because they couldn’t afford the rights to a real game.
The AI is so simple that I’ve seen multiple bad guys running into a wall trying to get where they are going. One time I saw two enemies doing this at once, while running in two completely different directions. Somehow, sometimes the enemies don’t hear your weapon fire. The either rely entirely on line of sight, or only notice you when you’re incredibly close to them, and when you’re that close, you’re already firing at them, killing them before they can even fire at you. There are some guys who are slightly harder to kill than the others, but they’re still such an insignificant amount of trouble.
Every now and again, the game likes to have a section that breaks up the shooting, but always ends up being slow, boring, and tedious. There’s one level that begins in a tram (train?), where you have to protect the tram from being damaged and exploding. It isn’t that long or difficult, it’s just incredibly tedious. It’s soon followed by an incredibly short section where you have to use your fists to attack enemies because they captured you and took all of your weapons that was so short that it feels like it could have been taken out of the game completely and replaced with a cutscene of your character attacking one of the guards and stealing his weapon.
There is even a pseudo stealth section, and I say pseudo, because it doesn’t even put in the bare minimum of just hiding in the shadows until someone turns around you can sneak past them. And it doesn’t even matter anyway, because you can just blast everyone away, and you don’t get punished for it. The only thing that matters is killing the guy that the objectives want you to kill.
The weapons are also pretty generic. I say weapons, plural, but really there is one weapon that slightly changes its look depending on it’s fire mode. Basically the gun is a stand in for the generic array of weapons that most First Person Shooters have. The assault rifle and sniper rifle modes are the most useful, followed by the grenade launcher and the RPG, which are good for taking out groups of enemies close together. But then we have the shotgun.
The shotgun is one of the most mediocre shotguns I’ve ever seen in a game. For it to even be effective, you have to run right up to an enemy and hope your aiming is good enough that you can take it out in one go. Any further and it’s useless. With the other modes in the gun, the shotgun pretty much never gets used outside of you using it once, finding out it’s terrible, and never using it again.
Actually, there is a second gun, a generic handgun. The only time I used it is when the game took away my omni-weapon. It works, but I’ve never felt the need to ever go back to it outside of that one time.
You can pick up upgrades for your gun throughout the game. Some of them you seem to get automatically, but I have no idea where your character got these from. Maybe it’s a Metroid: Other M situation where you’re playing a character who isn’t allowed to use them until a certain point in the game. Or maybe I’m trying to make up excuses for an already bad game by comparing it to an even worse one.
The game doesn’t even include multiplayer. Not even split-screen multiplayer or co-op. This game has such little replayability that you could watch someones let’s play on Youtube and pretend it’s a machinima movie put together by a couple of friends.
While the game doesn’t have ragdoll physics, since games were still in that transition period where not every game had realistic physic yet, but it’s still mildly amusing to see a character’s body zip past the camera like Wile E. Coyote when a grenade explodes next to them. How depressing is it that the most fun I had with this game was purely accidental.
This game was released in 2005. At this point, the original Xbox had Halo 1 and 2, Doom 3, Unreal Championship, and Half-Life 2. This game was even released the same year as Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, Serious Sam 2, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. It’s not like the Xbox was hurting for fantastic First Person Shooters. And that’s only the FPS games that only appeared exclusively on the original Xbox (sans PC version of course, we’re talking consoles only here), as there were tons of multi-platform First Person Shooters on the console too. So it’s incredibly easy to see why Classified: The Sentinel Crisis was so overlooked.
Why would you buy this over any other FPS the system had to offer? You could buy the disc version the Halo 2 Multiplayer maps and have a better time playing by yourself by just running around and looking at how good the level and art design is. At least then you could have some friends over and a good time.
This game might not even be close to the worst game I’ve played on a technical level, or even on a conceptual level, but there is one thing I can say about a lot of bad games. They either have ambition, personality, or, if nothing else, they’re easy to make fun of.
At some point there was going to be a PS2 version, but it ended up being cancelled for unknown reasons. I’m guessing it’s because this game barely sold any copies, and was promptly forgotten before it even hit store shelves.
Classified: The Sentinel Crisis has to be one of the most bland First Person Shooters that I’ve ever played. From it’s name and box art, to it’s characters, plot, and levels. Not great, not terrible, just incredibly bland and forgettable. Unless you are on the hunt to collect everything you can for your retro games collection, you should probably avoid this.